The Fenerbahce forward had some pregame help before netting 33 points in a vital road victory
Nigel Hayes-Davis drew inspiration from Kobe Bryant to down Real Madrid
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Towards the end of the first quarter of Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul’s Rivalries Series trip to Real Madrid on Thursday night, it looked as though the Turkish team was heading for its second loss of the week in Spain.
A three-point strike from Sergio Llull had given the Spanish team a double-digit lead, 20-10, with Fenerbahce having scored just four baskets in the opening nine minutes. After suffering a dispiriting 88-76 loss at Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz two days earlier, Saras Jasikevicius’s players might have been forgiven for wishing the time away for their flight back to Turkiye.
But the mentality of this team does not allow them to simply roll over and accept a third consecutive defeat, and Fenerbahce found a way to fight back to claim a valuable and ultimately comfortable 70-82 victory.
The catalyst, inevitably, was Nigel Hayes-Davis, who was a constant threat throughout the game. The forward started off by scoring his team’s first three field goals of the night at a time when no other visiting player could make a basket, later netted a three-pointer to give his team its first lead (20-23), then struck another triple for Fenerbahce’s first double-digit margin (41-52) and finished off by sinking his sixth threeball on the final buzzer for a total of 33 points – more than three times the amount scored by any other visiting player.
After the game, Hayes-Davis revealed that he found unlikely inspiration to bounce back from quiet games in losses against EA7 Emporio Armani Milan and Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz, when he respectively scored just 6 and 11 points.
"I just watched a video," he told EuroLeague TV. "Kobe [Bryant] was giving an interview and they asked him, 'It looks like you’ve hit a wall.' He was like, 'I don’t think so, but if I did, then I’ll just run though the wall.'
"I watched that right before I walked on the court, so that’s the mentality I went in there with. Being aggressive, because I learned a valuable lesson: I tried to let the game come to me against Milan and Niko [Mirotic] embarrassed me, and then I tried to do the same thing in Baskonia and we got embarrassed as a team. So I wanted to show today that I learned from those lessons."
That intent to play with more aggression was replicated throughout the Fenerbahce team, which had faced criticism from Coach Jasikevicius following the loss at Baskonia two days earlier.
"You really shouldn’t have to tell us [to play harder]," insisted Hayes-Davis. "We make great money to play a little bit harder, give a little bit more. It’s more of an effort thing. Once we play with great effort, great intensity, we put ourselves in the game.
"It’s up to us to try to go out there and execute. If the ball goes in, great. But if not, we can rely on rebounding and hustle plays that don’t require talent, just effort."
Jasikevicius echoed that sentiment, admitting that he was very happy with the effort of his players against Real: "This is how we have to win right now. We’ve got to take down our turnover numbers, and we’ve got to fight, especially rebounds. [We were] plus eight in these departments; eight possessions more.
"I thought our point guard play was extremely solid, we were going with the ball the majority of the time wherever we wanted, we were fighting, and this is the only thing that we can ask for at this point. Super-solid. We kept our heads in the game, we played exactly what we wanted. Not exactly brilliant, but it’s not easy to be brilliant against Madrid."
'Brilliant' was the perfect word for Nigel Hayes-Davis, and everyone else supported his efforts by doing more than enough to get Fenerbahce back into winning ways.